Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, Are you did? In touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I am an editor at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as he typically does on days
Speaker 1: like this, not rainy ones, but the days we do
Speaker 1: the podcast. Although today's both senior writer Jonathan Strickland of
Speaker 1: Herbert West who was my friend in college, and an
Speaker 1: afterlife I can speak only with extreme terror. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a good one to start today. Yes, today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about a subject that is, uh, it's pretty terrifying.
Speaker 1: We're talking about nuclear weapons. Yes, yes, not clear not
Speaker 1: nuclear he was. I was teasing him about this before
Speaker 1: and he said that I had better not I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say nuclear, I mean other than just then. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I wanted to uh to
Speaker 1: talk about this today is because it's been in the
Speaker 1: news a lot lately. Um. Of course, uh iran um
Speaker 1: is rumored or depending on whom you ask, more than
Speaker 1: rumored to be working on nuclear weapons program. And um,
Speaker 1: you know that that's been a busy topic. I was
Speaker 1: about to say, a hot topic, let's not go there
Speaker 1: um lately, and I thought, well, you know, why don't
Speaker 1: we We've never really talked about, um, the technology that
Speaker 1: makes nuclear weapons possible. UM. And while I'm not particularly
Speaker 1: fond of things that cause death and destruction, uh, the
Speaker 1: the actual bombs themselves, how they make them work is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, and it's it's important stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of there are a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions about nuclear arms races. You know, we had
Speaker 1: a famous nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: the United States during the Cold War, which uh started
Speaker 1: to look like things were going to to improve, where
Speaker 1: you know, both nations were starting to dismantle a lot
Speaker 1: of their nuclear weapon programs. But then you've got other
Speaker 1: countries like China and India and Pakistan and other countries
Speaker 1: that are that have either have a nuclear weapons program
Speaker 1: or developing. North Korea is another good example. They either
Speaker 1: have a and a fully fledged out nuclear weapons program
Speaker 1: or they're working on it. And uh, it adds a
Speaker 1: lot of concern because these weapons potentially pack an enormous
Speaker 1: punch and it's the kind of weapon that you know,
Speaker 1: most weapons, you use them and then the uh, that
Speaker 1: immediate moment, the aftermath, that's that's all you're dealing with.
Speaker 1: And the aftermath is generally, you know, not not uh
Speaker 1: something that is perpetual, right, I mean, you might have
Speaker 1: to do some massive clean up or whatever, but that's it.
Speaker 1: Nuclear weapons are different, and that the aftermath can be
Speaker 1: as destructive or maybe not as destructive, but but destructive
Speaker 1: on their own beyond the initial blast. And so plus
Speaker 1: plus it's possible that the uh, the effects of the
Speaker 1: nuclear blast can carry across the terrain to places that
Speaker 1: the US, as we'll find out in in our discussion, um,
Speaker 1: that people may not necessarily have been planning on being affected.
Speaker 1: Yeah you might. You know, it's not just the immediate area.
Speaker 1: It's not a precision weapon and that Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: precision blast area that you're that you can be pretty
Speaker 1: sure is going to be vaporized when you hit it.
Speaker 1: But then there's a large area around that. Depending upon
Speaker 1: the climate and you know, the specific weather conditions at
Speaker 1: that time, it could affect neighboring countries, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: innocent bystanders to whatever. So let's get into this, let's
Speaker 1: talk first about atoms. Yeah, I mean you think about
Speaker 1: it that One of the fascinating things about this is
Speaker 1: that such a devastating reaction can be caused something as
Speaker 1: tiny as an atom. Yeah. Uh. And just so that
Speaker 1: we all have our little a little refresher course, even
Speaker 1: though I'm sure no one listening needs it. Your basic
Speaker 1: atom has a nucleus that is orbited by electrons. Now
Speaker 1: your electrons are you're negatively charged particles. Yes, your nucleus
Speaker 1: typically contains at least one proton. Actually it has to
Speaker 1: otherwise it's not an atom. So the proton is a
Speaker 1: positively charged particle, and the protons positive charge in the
Speaker 1: electrons negative charge are attracted to one another. It's pretty powerful. Now,
Speaker 1: there can also be in that nucleus a and a
Speaker 1: particle that carries no charge at all, a neutron which
Speaker 1: has no charge, and neutrons kind of act like glue
Speaker 1: for protons. Because you know, you've got this this nucleus
Speaker 1: that could have more than one proton. Well, the problem
Speaker 1: is that a similar charges repel one another. So if
Speaker 1: you have to possibly charged particles and you try and
Speaker 1: put them close to each other, they're going to start
Speaker 1: repelling each other. Well, neutrons kind of act like a
Speaker 1: glue that that allows these protons to group together to
Speaker 1: form this nucleus. So, uh, if you've I'm getting out
Speaker 1: of here. No, no, no, no, it's all right, it's
Speaker 1: all right. Now you can change the number of neutrons
Speaker 1: that are within an atom. And if you do that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, atoms have typically they have a number of
Speaker 1: neutrons that you will naturally find within the atoms of
Speaker 1: that element. Uh. If you find something that's outside of
Speaker 1: that that either is gut either has more fewer neutrons,
Speaker 1: it's an isotope. So isotopes of atoms are atoms that
Speaker 1: contain a different number of neutrons than you would typically
Speaker 1: find them in nature. Plus baseball team in Springfield, that's
Speaker 1: also true. Now, this is not to be confused with ions.
Speaker 1: And ion is an atom that has either gained or
Speaker 1: lost in electron, and so it either has a positive
Speaker 1: charge or a negative charge because of that. So of course,
Speaker 1: if it's gained an electron, then overall the atom has
Speaker 1: a negative charge. If it's lost in electron, then overall
Speaker 1: the atom has a positive charge. So that's the difference
Speaker 1: between ions and isotopes. Now isotopes. Really that's what ends
Speaker 1: up being important in these nuclear weapons. It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of a key feature. Um. Another thing that's that's important
Speaker 1: to note is that for the most part, atoms are
Speaker 1: pretty stable. I mean, once you get them in their
Speaker 1: natural state, they're unlikely to change all that much. They
Speaker 1: don't uh, randomly shed electrons or the things unless some
Speaker 1: force acts on them. They just sort of go along
Speaker 1: there about their business and stick to themselves, right because
Speaker 1: if they were if they were unstable, they would very
Speaker 1: they would not necessarily very quickly. But if they were unstable,
Speaker 1: they would change to become more stable over time. That's
Speaker 1: what we call decay. So if you have an atom
Speaker 1: that is unstable, it will eventually change to a more
Speaker 1: stable form, and in the process of that, it's going
Speaker 1: to give up some energy, uh, and it can give
Speaker 1: up energy and in multiple ways. There's actually three main
Speaker 1: types of radioactive decay. There's alpha decay, which is where
Speaker 1: you've got your nucleus and it it's going to kick
Speaker 1: out two protons and two neutrons bound together, which is
Speaker 1: also called an alpha particle. Then you've got beta decay,
Speaker 1: and this is where a neutron actually changes becomes a proton. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then the neutron or the proton and the an electron
Speaker 1: and an anti anti neutrino are all ejected together. That's
Speaker 1: the beta particle or actually the ejected electron is the
Speaker 1: beta particle specifically UM. So yeah, good all anti neutrinos.
Speaker 1: I tell you they they go opposite the best as
Speaker 1: the speed of light. So we talked about the whole
Speaker 1: new trinos whether or not they were going faster than
Speaker 1: the speed of light with large hatron collider. Right now,
Speaker 1: it looks like they didn't. Looks like that was all
Speaker 1: due to some some issues with the measuring technology. Looking
Speaker 1: at the scoreboard today right, which could change by the
Speaker 1: time this podcast gets out. So the third type is
Speaker 1: spontaneous fission. Now, fission is where you have a nucleus
Speaker 1: split into two pieces. It's um the opposite of fusion.
Speaker 1: Fusion is where two nucleuses come together and join, and
Speaker 1: both vision and fusion you have a release of energy. Now,
Speaker 1: for radioactive decay, we're specifically talking about fission, not fusion.
Speaker 1: So in this the nucleus splits and it might eject
Speaker 1: neutrons which can become neutron rays, and it also can
Speaker 1: emit electromagnetic energy called gamma rays, which do not talk
Speaker 1: about fantast stick for you're looking at me like I
Speaker 1: was talking about some or the Hulk. I was waiting
Speaker 1: for you to make that joke. Actually, I think it
Speaker 1: was cosmic rays with the fantastic gamma radiation for the
Speaker 1: incredible Hulk. I don't want to get my science wrong.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely scientific. My air quotes science wrong. So yeah,
Speaker 1: gamma rays. It's interesting that they are the only type
Speaker 1: of nuclear radiation that comes from energy rather than particles. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, I bet you learned that on how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Yes, there's a really good article about that.
Speaker 1: We we have we have a couple of articles on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com that are going to be
Speaker 1: really useful as we talk about this. They include how
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons work, how nuclear how nuclear radiation works, and
Speaker 1: also how there's an article about the Manhattan Project. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about the Manhattan Project in a little bit. So
Speaker 1: we've now got these three different forms of radioactive decay
Speaker 1: and we know about this new spontaneous fission. Well, what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that the fission doesn't necessary really have to
Speaker 1: be spontaneous. If you find the right kind of unstable
Speaker 1: atom and you are able to bombard it with neutrons.
Speaker 1: Then sometimes those atoms will accept a neutron and in
Speaker 1: the process they will become so unstable as that the
Speaker 1: nucleus itself will split apart, and in that process the
Speaker 1: nucleus will release energy. It also may release other neutrons,
Speaker 1: which means that if you get a bunch of these
Speaker 1: unstable items together and you shoot a neutron at them,
Speaker 1: and then that first that first nucleus splits apart and
Speaker 1: more neutrons split off of it, it can cause more
Speaker 1: of these unstable atoms to do the same thing, and
Speaker 1: that's where you have a chain reaction. I can't remember
Speaker 1: who it was that had that the TV show where
Speaker 1: they had a clear plastic box and on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the box they had uh mouse traps, and each
Speaker 1: mouse traps, each mouse trap had two ping pong balls
Speaker 1: on it, and those represented um the stable. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: probably been done by five thousand people anyway. You can
Speaker 1: find clips of the same sort of thing on YouTube
Speaker 1: and then by lots of different people, and I enjoy
Speaker 1: watching it because it's really an excellent demonstration. So each
Speaker 1: of these these mouse trap atoms with its two ping
Speaker 1: pong balls represents these unstable atoms, and as soon and
Speaker 1: the ping pong balls represent the ejected neutrons exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: And so uh, somebody else will drop a ping pong
Speaker 1: ball inside a small hole in the box representing the
Speaker 1: neutron in this case that is bombarding these these atoms.
Speaker 1: And as soon as it hits one mouse trap and
Speaker 1: sets it off, the ping pong balls from that one
Speaker 1: fly in other directions, thereby setting off the other mouse traps,
Speaker 1: and it all happens in a very very short period
Speaker 1: of time. It takes almost no time at all for
Speaker 1: this thing, for all the the mouse traps to release
Speaker 1: their part of ping pong balls now. And in the
Speaker 1: case of a nuclear weapon, these reactions are happening in
Speaker 1: billions of a second. So now let's get to the
Speaker 1: actual elements that are used in nuclear weaponry. So one
Speaker 1: of them is an isotope of uranium, uranium two thirty five.
Speaker 1: That's a very complex atom. Yeah, it's got ninety two protons, right, so,
Speaker 1: but it's got a hundred and forty three neutrons. And
Speaker 1: the thing about this is that it will accept a
Speaker 1: neutron if if you bombard uranium two thirty five, it
Speaker 1: very easily will accept that neutron. Yeah yeah, and then
Speaker 1: it it makes the uranium unstable, and then it will
Speaker 1: split apart like I just said in and you'll get
Speaker 1: that energy and those other neutrons released. So that the problem,
Speaker 1: the problem with this, many problems with this. One of
Speaker 1: the issues that the people who first started working on
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons technology encountered was that, first of all, they
Speaker 1: weren't sure which elements were going to react this way,
Speaker 1: because not all of them do, so finding the right
Speaker 1: elements was tricky. The other part is that uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five is relatively rare compared to other isotopes of uranium. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So when you find naturally occurring uranium, the
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five in that deposit is going to
Speaker 1: be relatively sparse, and for a nuclear weapon to work,
Speaker 1: you need about uranium two thirty five so that you
Speaker 1: have the right amount of material to perpetuate this chain reaction.
Speaker 1: Otherwise your your atoms that are unstable, maybe too far
Speaker 1: apart from each other for that chain reaction to really
Speaker 1: take off. Note to all the nuclear physicists who are
Speaker 1: writing who have paused to podcast and rode in to
Speaker 1: tell us that there are other types of fuel that
Speaker 1: can be used for nuclear weapons. Yes, we know that.
Speaker 1: However we're using we're starting here, starting with uranium because
Speaker 1: that's where that's where, that's where the scientists started. Yes,
Speaker 1: plutonium also used as all as their hydrogen bombs that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about a little bit. But even hydrogen bombs
Speaker 1: use uranium and plutonium um. It's just that they're they're
Speaker 1: using a different mechanism. They're using fusion as opposed to vision.
Speaker 1: So uranium two thirty five, you have to actually refine
Speaker 1: your your right, your uranium. Wow, I can't talk today,
Speaker 1: but yes, you must take uranium, your uranium, yeah, toy
Speaker 1: boat anyway, you have to take this uranium there we
Speaker 1: got that works and refine it so that you have
Speaker 1: a higher percentage of uranium two thirty five. Which is
Speaker 1: what you hear about when you when you hear about
Speaker 1: these these nations like Iran with their nuclear program, you
Speaker 1: hear about are they making uranium for power facilities or
Speaker 1: are they trying to make weaponized uranium. This is talking
Speaker 1: about the enrichment process. Yes, so if you are enriching,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're creating uranium, so that you've got
Speaker 1: a section of uranium the is uranium that's indicative of
Speaker 1: a weapon that's not. You don't need that kind of
Speaker 1: concentration for a nuclear power facility. So that's one of
Speaker 1: those things that that inspectors try to determine when they
Speaker 1: go and look at a nuclear power facility to make
Speaker 1: sure that the uranium being produced is not weapons grade uranium.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's the basis, that's the basic science behind
Speaker 1: the fission part of nuclear weapons. Will get into fusion
Speaker 1: in a second. So how did this all come about? Well,
Speaker 1: first we have to look at a fellow named Einstein. Now,
Speaker 1: Einstein came up with that famous equation E equals MC
Speaker 1: squared the theory of relativity, which states that energy is
Speaker 1: equal to mass times the speed of light squared the
Speaker 1: constant of the speed of light through a vacuum. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, so that means that you take the
Speaker 1: you take and a unit of mass, you multiply it
Speaker 1: by the square of the speed of light speed of
Speaker 1: light squared rather and and then that's how much energy
Speaker 1: you get from that mass. So this tells us that
Speaker 1: a tiny little bit of mass could equate to an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of energy because you're multiplying that that unit
Speaker 1: of mass against a huge number. Well, that starts leading
Speaker 1: people to think, well, this is true, then there should
Speaker 1: be some way to tap into the stuff that's around
Speaker 1: us and get at huge amounts of energy. And you
Speaker 1: had a lot of really really smart people working on this,
Speaker 1: and most of them were probably at least initially working
Speaker 1: on this as a way of finding a new energy source,
Speaker 1: not necessarily a weapon. However, World War Two really helped
Speaker 1: push the the the the research towards finding a way
Speaker 1: of using this in a military application as opposed to
Speaker 1: to just a power generation alternative. So then we go
Speaker 1: up to the nineteen thirties. You've got a fellow named
Speaker 1: Enrico Fermi, and hep him in grade school. He's the
Speaker 1: one who discovered that if you were to shoot neutrons
Speaker 1: at atoms, you could sometimes form new elements. And they
Speaker 1: were including ones that just did not show up on
Speaker 1: the periodic table at all. So most of these are
Speaker 1: are atoms that are so unstable that you know they
Speaker 1: almost immediately decay. But uh that he discovered that, and
Speaker 1: then a few years later a pair of German scientists
Speaker 1: Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered that by bombarding uranium
Speaker 1: with neutrons that they could create cause the uranium atoms
Speaker 1: to split. So they're the ones who actually connected the
Speaker 1: concept of fission with shooting neutrons at an isotope and
Speaker 1: uh it actually created a radioactive barium isotope once they
Speaker 1: did that, and that's how they discovered, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is what happens. If you do this, then you
Speaker 1: have a couple of other There are so many famous
Speaker 1: names that we could mention that worked on this, but
Speaker 1: Neil's Bore and John Wheeler started to theorize that if
Speaker 1: you were to create a fission reaction within enough of
Speaker 1: this material, you could cause a chain reaction, and if
Speaker 1: you were to contain this in some way, you could
Speaker 1: have a controlled nuclear reaction which would generate huge amounts
Speaker 1: of energy. Uh. Now, a controlled nuclear reaction could allow
Speaker 1: you to have uh power, or a controlled nuclear reaction
Speaker 1: that then results in an uncontrolled explosion is a weapon.
Speaker 1: It's a bomb. You know. I'm sort of reminded of
Speaker 1: our our discussion of quantum computing, which also works with adams.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that figuring out the predict predictability
Speaker 1: if you happen to listen to that podcast of where
Speaker 1: the particle will go and in what direction um is
Speaker 1: not always possible. That's one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: quantum cryptography so useful. But yeah, in this case, UM,
Speaker 1: it's kind of scary because if you imagine that this
Speaker 1: this reaction is going to unleash a large amount of power,
Speaker 1: or maybe it won't. You know, that's that can be
Speaker 1: a little scary because you don't know for sure exactly
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen when you do this is which is
Speaker 1: why UM, you know, they started doing experiments like you know,
Speaker 1: Columbia University in n um up in New York. They
Speaker 1: starting to mess around with this to see if they
Speaker 1: could make it work. University of Chicago squash court. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: now that's funny because of underground underneath the famous stag
Speaker 1: field there at the University of Chicago. UM, they were
Speaker 1: Enrico Fermi finally got it to work in the controlled situation. UM,
Speaker 1: so you know, again, what what if it weren't controlled
Speaker 1: that might have been a little scary, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he got it to to uh to do what they
Speaker 1: thought and this This was important because UM again this
Speaker 1: is they realize is that this could be a seriously
Speaker 1: potent weapon that they could be building. So UM they
Speaker 1: realized that if they could harness this and do this
Speaker 1: in a controlled way, you know, then they could turn
Speaker 1: it to their advantage. UM. Around the same time that
Speaker 1: work was being done on uranium uh and and nuclear fission,
Speaker 1: scientists over at the University of California at Berkeley back
Speaker 1: in discovered a new element, element ninety four uh and
Speaker 1: They thought that this could also work as a potential
Speaker 1: fuel for nuclear chain reactions. And this element they named
Speaker 1: plutonium and the dog, Yes, it was named for the
Speaker 1: dog the it took. It took his name for the
Speaker 1: Roman god. But yeah, it was a year later they
Speaker 1: had actually produced enough plutonium to finally do some experiments
Speaker 1: on it, because it was not something that was easily found,
Speaker 1: which I guess we should all be thankful for. UM.
Speaker 1: And they they figured out that plutonium also would undergo
Speaker 1: fission when bombarded by neutrons. You know, we should talk
Speaker 1: about the criticality of about the of the the atoms themselves.
Speaker 1: Because the thing is, UM say, say you have your
Speaker 1: your creative mousetratchs and ping pong balls. You have to
Speaker 1: make sure that nothing is going to set it off
Speaker 1: before you mean to set it off. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want to have something jostle that that system and have
Speaker 1: it all go off prematurely. And of course with a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb, this is truly important because of the the
Speaker 1: just the enormous amount of damage that it could it
Speaker 1: could it could cause. So yeah, so there's there's a
Speaker 1: couple different concepts here. There's a concept called critical mass,
Speaker 1: which is the minimum amount of mass necessary for you
Speaker 1: to have a sustain nuclear fission reaction. And then there's
Speaker 1: the subcritical mass, which is where you've got lower than
Speaker 1: that amount, And ideally what you want is to have
Speaker 1: lower than that amount up until the point where you
Speaker 1: actually want to detonate the bomb. Yes, because that's going
Speaker 1: to keep it as safe as you can you can
Speaker 1: get it. So there were a lot of challenges in
Speaker 1: trying to find a way to create a bomb where
Speaker 1: you had the material set up as subcritical until the
Speaker 1: moment of detonation, where it would convert to a critical mass,
Speaker 1: so that that nuclear reaction would remain sustained within it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise your bomb would still be dangerous. It would still
Speaker 1: emit radiation, It would still admit a lot of energy,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't cause as much damage as it was
Speaker 1: designed to do. Right now, now, critical mass is, as
Speaker 1: Jonathan said, the minimum amount needed to to achieve the
Speaker 1: fish and reaction. Now uh, ideally for a for a
Speaker 1: bomb condition, if you're you're trying to do this, um,
Speaker 1: you would want the fuel to be in a supercritical mass,
Speaker 1: which basically means there's more than enough necessary to to
Speaker 1: achieve the fish and reaction. Um uh you know, because
Speaker 1: in this case it just applies and plenty. You want
Speaker 1: to make sure that it's going to happen. You don't wanna,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have it where through some weird
Speaker 1: set of circumstances, just some improbable but possible outcome that
Speaker 1: the bomb that a smaller percentage of the reactions takes
Speaker 1: place than you had anticipated, because that means that the
Speaker 1: effect is going to be smaller than you had anticipated.
Speaker 1: And if you're gonna be building something as nasty and
Speaker 1: dangerous as a nuclear weapon, you kind of want it
Speaker 1: to be effective. Yes. Yeah, The point is again to
Speaker 1: to operate it when it's going to achieve the desired effect,
Speaker 1: and not before and which is really I mean, this
Speaker 1: is where it gets hard to talk about this because
Speaker 1: the desired effect is so mind numbingly awful. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to speak of it in a in a clinical sense. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a little rough. So there there are two
Speaker 1: different ways to create a supercritical mass within a fission
Speaker 1: based bomb. Uh. And actually both of these ways were
Speaker 1: used in the first two nuclear weapons ever actually used
Speaker 1: in battle. Um. One of the things that I think
Speaker 1: of is uh, again in in a clinical sense, but
Speaker 1: it's it's still kind of amusing to me, is in
Speaker 1: reading about this. Um. The nuclear weapons that were detonated
Speaker 1: in Japan too, uh, or i should say over Japan
Speaker 1: to um end the Second World War were really I
Speaker 1: mean it seems like, well, they did what they were
Speaker 1: intended to do, but they were really more like lab
Speaker 1: experiments packed in a case and and and created. So
Speaker 1: I mean, now things are are pretty standardized, but the
Speaker 1: two those two weapons were very different and the way
Speaker 1: they did things and uh and really they the scientists
Speaker 1: weren't certain that they were going to do what they
Speaker 1: thought they were going to do. Yeah. And those two
Speaker 1: weapons were called we're called Little Boy and Fat many.
Speaker 1: Little Boy was the one that was dropped on Hiroshima
Speaker 1: on August six n and Fat Man was dropped over
Speaker 1: Nagasaki on August nine. So these two us two different
Speaker 1: methods to initiate this supercritical mass and begin the nuclear
Speaker 1: fission process. A Little Boy used what was was called
Speaker 1: a bullet. It's ah, you, in order to start this
Speaker 1: whole reaction, you have to have something that's going to
Speaker 1: create neutrons, and in this case, it actually was a bullet,
Speaker 1: although not you know, in the sense of a gun.
Speaker 1: The gun that fired, it was not the kind of
Speaker 1: gun that we would think of necessarily, right, This was
Speaker 1: a So you take take a ball of uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five, all right, and then you take a small
Speaker 1: amount of that two out as a bullet. It's a projectile.
Speaker 1: It's placed at one end of a long tube. It's
Speaker 1: got explosives behind it. So when the explosives go off,
Speaker 1: it propels the bullet down the tube until it impacts
Speaker 1: the sphere of uranim two five at the other end.
Speaker 1: And uh so, the here's how it. Here's what happens.
Speaker 1: Explosives fire, the bullet goes down the barrel, the bullet
Speaker 1: hits the sphere and it hits a neutron generator. Like
Speaker 1: I said, you have to have neutrons to start this
Speaker 1: fission process. So just dropping uranium two five, that's not
Speaker 1: that's not going to cause a huge explosion. But by
Speaker 1: creating these neutrons with this neutron generator, uh, it ends
Speaker 1: up starting off that that series of reactions within the bomb.
Speaker 1: So once those neutrons are generating and starts saying the
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five, the fission reaction begins. The individual
Speaker 1: atoms of uranium two five starts to split, and A
Speaker 1: two start to eject neutrons, which causes more uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five to split, and that reaction continues and the
Speaker 1: energy builds up until the bomb explodes. So that was
Speaker 1: the little Boy version, by the way, in case you're
Speaker 1: wondering how little little Boy was, uh, it was it. Well,
Speaker 1: it was able to drop a bomb that was equivalent
Speaker 1: to fourteen point five kilo tons of T and T
Speaker 1: wait no, um, yeah, so yeah, so little is a
Speaker 1: as a relative term. And then we have fat Man.
Speaker 1: Fat Man used an implosion triggered bomb. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: this is different from the bullet method, and what happens
Speaker 1: here is you've got a sphere of the nuclear fuel,
Speaker 1: so in this case again uranium two thirty five and
Speaker 1: then you have plutonium two thirty nine core inside that
Speaker 1: and and and surrounding the core are some explosives. So
Speaker 1: what happens is in this bomb, the the sequence of
Speaker 1: events is the explosives around the plutonium fires and that
Speaker 1: creates a shock wave. The shock wave ends up compressing
Speaker 1: that plutonium to nine and that compression is what triggers
Speaker 1: the fission reaction within the plutonium. That reaction becomes a
Speaker 1: chain reaction again, and the energy is build up and
Speaker 1: then the bomb explodes. So the whole way that this
Speaker 1: works is that it it creates and then directs that
Speaker 1: shock wave from the un initial explosion to generate that
Speaker 1: first fission reaction that becomes the chain reaction. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a little different from the bullet method. Uh, and it
Speaker 1: was it was interesting, you know, both of these methods
Speaker 1: were being worked on at the same time during the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project and uh, actually the implosion triggered bomb. I understand,
Speaker 1: it was the very first method that was tested. Who's
Speaker 1: the trinity bomb that was tested back in Los Alamos,
Speaker 1: which was not prime real estate back in that time
Speaker 1: because of all the nuclear testing they did. In fact,
Speaker 1: back when they did that first nuclear bomb test, no
Speaker 1: one really knew what the result was going to be, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just no way of knowing. And uh,
Speaker 1: it turned out that several of the scientists who are
Speaker 1: observing the nuclear bomb test back in Los Alamos temporarily
Speaker 1: lost their vision because the the explosion was so bright
Speaker 1: that it damaged their eyes. But they were able to
Speaker 1: recover their vision after a while. But people didn't know
Speaker 1: how powerful this was going to be, how intense the
Speaker 1: energy was going to be, and so they were viewing
Speaker 1: it with their naked eye, and that turned out to
Speaker 1: be a mistake, right, And of course, uh, an explosion
Speaker 1: of that magnitude also spread radioactive material over a very large,
Speaker 1: uh physical space. So uh, you know, we were talking
Speaker 1: about that a few minutes ago. When there is a
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion like this, if there is um you know,
Speaker 1: it spreads nuclear material out over an area. Basically, you
Speaker 1: can think of it in roughly, if you're taking weather
Speaker 1: out of the picture, um, you know, you would have
Speaker 1: a huge circular ish area over which this material is spread. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, if the wind is blowing um, you know
Speaker 1: or you know, the temperature is right, the the material
Speaker 1: can drift along with the wind. That can uh you know,
Speaker 1: get into water supplies, it can you know, cover it
Speaker 1: can move quite a bit. Um. And you know, the
Speaker 1: the effects, the physical effects of course, UM. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there can be a lot more than just uh,
Speaker 1: vision problems. I mean there's there's there's cancer has been
Speaker 1: attributed to it um. There have band cancers attributed to
Speaker 1: it um and many many other physical conditions um related
Speaker 1: to that. So it's not just the people who are atomized,
Speaker 1: if you will, by the bomb right as they are,
Speaker 1: they happen to be in close enough proximity that it
Speaker 1: can have long lasting effects on on many many other
Speaker 1: people and can make the area radioactive for many many
Speaker 1: years to come. Yeah, These these elements that are experiencing
Speaker 1: radioactive decay, they can be in this state for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, depending on the materials. The Yeah. The essential
Speaker 1: if you are if you're at ground zero of a
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, which is which is essentially right at the
Speaker 1: center of the explosion, yea, the location of the detonation essentially, Um.
Speaker 1: The the thing that would kill you be the heat. Yes,
Speaker 1: the heat would be so intense that you would you
Speaker 1: would be essentially vaporized. Um. But following the heat is
Speaker 1: the pressure that's created from the shock wave of the explosion.
Speaker 1: And so let's say that you're far enough out where
Speaker 1: you're not going to be vaporized by that heat, that
Speaker 1: pressure could be enough to knock over the building you're
Speaker 1: in totally. It could crush you. So you have that
Speaker 1: to look forward to. Then you've got, like like Chris
Speaker 1: was saying, the radiation and the radioactive fallout. So you
Speaker 1: can think of that sort of a bull's eye target, right,
Speaker 1: Like the very center of that target is where the
Speaker 1: heat is going to be the most intense. Just outside
Speaker 1: of that is the general area where the pressure from
Speaker 1: the shock wave is going to be intense enough to
Speaker 1: be deadly. Just outside of that is the radiation, where
Speaker 1: the radiation could be strong enough where you're you could
Speaker 1: suffer severe radiation sickness, uh, just from the exposure from that.
Speaker 1: And then the radioactive fallout could affect the largest area,
Speaker 1: and like you were saying, the weather can end up
Speaker 1: carrying particles that have this radioactivity to them and contaminate
Speaker 1: other areas miles and miles away from the site of
Speaker 1: the bombing. It can affect living cells, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: preventing them from behaving normally. I mean they can cause
Speaker 1: birth defects in in future generations. Um. So this is
Speaker 1: this is very very serious stuff of course. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: later after one of the things that they realized after
Speaker 1: using these weapons was these these fission bombs work very well.
Speaker 1: Obviously they're very effective. But um they began thinking that, uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps fusion would be a more effective or create a
Speaker 1: more effective weapon. And that's the course they began following, right,
Speaker 1: And they in some cases they first started looking at fusion.
Speaker 1: Back in there was a physicist by the name of
Speaker 1: Edward Teller, and he came up with an idea called boosting.
Speaker 1: And this is a process where you create a fusion
Speaker 1: reaction in order to generate neutral ons, and those neutrons
Speaker 1: then go on to create a fission reaction. So it's
Speaker 1: a hybrid really. Uh. Now, like we said, fusion is
Speaker 1: where you've got the two atoms that combine together to
Speaker 1: form a heavier single atom, and in that process it
Speaker 1: gives off quite a bit of energy. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: can use different kinds of atoms to do this, but
Speaker 1: typically in a thermonuclear weapon. We're talking about hydrogen, and
Speaker 1: hydrogen has different isotopes, right, there's uh, deuterium and tritium. Yes,
Speaker 1: And this is all talk. Normally a hydrogen atom, uh
Speaker 1: just has the one proton, Yes, But if you add
Speaker 1: the if you start adding neutrons, then you get deuterium
Speaker 1: and tritium. And deuterium is stable. If you have a
Speaker 1: deuterium atom, it's stable. It's not gonna decay. You can
Speaker 1: actually create water with deuterium, but it will in enough,
Speaker 1: in large enough amounts. Deuterium is toxic, so it's not
Speaker 1: something you want to have around you. Uh. Is that
Speaker 1: heavy water? Is that heavy? You know what I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell you. All I remember about heavy water is uh
Speaker 1: from Batman? Should it? Pretty sure? That's not very scit,
Speaker 1: But then you think, you know, it would make sense
Speaker 1: in a in a in a sense because deuterium, you've
Speaker 1: got the neutron at it, which means that the actual
Speaker 1: atom itself is heavier, which means any molecule created out
Speaker 1: of that atom that would take the place of the
Speaker 1: normal is or the the natural state of that atom
Speaker 1: would be intern heavier. Sorry, you can keep talking. This
Speaker 1: is one of those times when uh, it's something didn't
Speaker 1: click to me until we were actually talking about it.
Speaker 1: And I'll let's see if I can find something like
Speaker 1: And I'm not a nuclear physicist, so I honestly can't
Speaker 1: answer all those questions off top of my head. But
Speaker 1: tritium is not uh stable, it will it will decay
Speaker 1: retive relatively quickly. So it's a bit of a challenge.
Speaker 1: But what what is it, Chris, Yes, it's it's water
Speaker 1: made with deuterium. There you go. And so trying to
Speaker 1: create a fusion bomb is a little bit tricky because
Speaker 1: tritium is one of those elements that is typically used
Speaker 1: in these but it is not it's not easy to store,
Speaker 1: and it's got a very short half life. So so
Speaker 1: if you have this problem with storage and how do
Speaker 1: you keep tritium stable so that you can have fusion
Speaker 1: reaction in order to start off the fission that's going
Speaker 1: to ultimately lead to this destructive force. Scientists came up
Speaker 1: with a fairly creative solution. First, they created a lithium deuterate,
Speaker 1: which is a solid compound and it does not have
Speaker 1: the problem of undergoing radioactive decay at room temperatures at
Speaker 1: normal temperatures or even you know, normal operating temperatures of
Speaker 1: a nucle your bomb until you detonate it. And then
Speaker 1: with the tritium problem, they began to rely upon a
Speaker 1: reaction of fission reaction which will produce tritium from lithium.
Speaker 1: So first they have to induce a fission reaction with
Speaker 1: the lithium, and then the lithium in turn will produce tritium.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the uh chance, you've got the
Speaker 1: the the right elements in place to have the fusion reaction,
Speaker 1: so you have fission to fusion to fission again to boom. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a little complicated, right, and uh that fission reaction
Speaker 1: with lithium, it also gives off a lot of X rays,
Speaker 1: and the X rays are actually what allow uh well,
Speaker 1: the X rays end up increasing the temperature within the bomb,
Speaker 1: all right, And those that increased temperature and the pressures
Speaker 1: that are associated with it are the that's the energy
Speaker 1: that goes into the system that allows fusion to happen.
Speaker 1: Because this is one of the tricky things about fusion.
Speaker 1: You gotta or energy into the system in order diffused
Speaker 1: two atoms together, right, right, and the components of the
Speaker 1: bomb are separated by casings that prevent accidental or or
Speaker 1: or maybe premature detonation, so that that initial explosion UH
Speaker 1: and causing the X rays basically UH causes the deterioration
Speaker 1: of those materials and allows the bomb to continue detonating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's it's it's it's a little complicated to talk
Speaker 1: about this without an illustration. Yes, but the way this
Speaker 1: fusion bomb would work is that you've got an implosion
Speaker 1: fission bomb with the cylinder casing of uranium two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: which is acting as a tamper. A tamper is the
Speaker 1: thing that is controlling this reaction so that you get
Speaker 1: as much energy involved before it actually unleashes the energy. Um.
Speaker 1: The within inside that that tamper of uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: eight is the lithium deuteride, and there's also a hollow
Speaker 1: rod of plutonium two thirty nine in the very center
Speaker 1: of all that. And then separating this this cylinder of
Speaker 1: a tamper of the uranium two eight from the implosion
Speaker 1: bomb is the shield of uranium and some plastic foam.
Speaker 1: And this is what once you start detonating at the
Speaker 1: sequence of events, is that the fission bomb, So that
Speaker 1: first explosion goes off, and this generates the really intense
Speaker 1: X rays which increased the temperature and the pressure within
Speaker 1: the bomb. Uh the shield, that uranium two shield with
Speaker 1: the foam, it actually is what keeps that contains that
Speaker 1: that explosion so that it does not prematurely detonate the
Speaker 1: rest of the fuel. But the heat causes the tamper
Speaker 1: that cylinder of the uranium two thirty eight to start
Speaker 1: to expand and it begins to burn away. It starts
Speaker 1: put more pressure on the lithium deuterate, which is squeezed
Speaker 1: so hard that it causes shock waves that initiate fission
Speaker 1: within the plutonium rod. So here's you've got your second
Speaker 1: fission reaction. So you've got the first fission reaction which
Speaker 1: causes the shock wave. Ultimately that begins a second fission
Speaker 1: reaction within the plutonium rod. Now that reaction starts to
Speaker 1: give off radiation, so it begins to to expel neutrons,
Speaker 1: and also it gives off a lot of heat, so
Speaker 1: now you've got even more heat in addition to the
Speaker 1: heat that was generated by the X rays. The neutrons
Speaker 1: go into the lithium deuterate, which then combine with the
Speaker 1: lithium and that makes tritium. So now you've got this
Speaker 1: environment of incredibly high temperature, this incredible pressure, and it
Speaker 1: allows the tritium and deuterium and also deuterium deuterium fusion
Speaker 1: reactions to occur. So you've got tritium combining with deuterium
Speaker 1: and deuterium combining with itself in these reactions, which produces
Speaker 1: even more heat, more radiation, more neutrons. Those neutrons from
Speaker 1: those fusion reactions induce a final fission reaction in the
Speaker 1: uranium two eight pieces that are making up that tamper,
Speaker 1: and the the shield that's around the whole thing, which
Speaker 1: of course creates even more radiation and heat, and then
Speaker 1: the bomb goes boom. So you've got these this series
Speaker 1: of explosions going on in a fusion bomb, several which
Speaker 1: are fission, one of which is fusion. The reason for that,
Speaker 1: you may wonder, well, why do you need so many
Speaker 1: reactions to go on for a bomb to explode? Well,
Speaker 1: when we were talking about Little Boy, Uh, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me about Little Boy is that it was
Speaker 1: incredibly destructive weapon, but only one point five percent of
Speaker 1: the material the fission norble material within that bomb actually
Speaker 1: underwent fission one five percent, so it could have been
Speaker 1: even more destruction. Yes, the energy it unleashed could have
Speaker 1: been orders of magnitude larger than it was, so a
Speaker 1: fusion one. A fusion bomb is designed in part to
Speaker 1: try and create as efficient a series of explosions and reactions,
Speaker 1: really we shouldn't even say explosions reactions within the bomb,
Speaker 1: um as as many as possible or as much of
Speaker 1: that material as possible, so that what it does detonate,
Speaker 1: it unleashes the largest amount of energy it possibly can
Speaker 1: for the the amount of payload that it has. Now,
Speaker 1: this also means that we have been able to reduce
Speaker 1: the size of the actual payloads because we can create
Speaker 1: just as an effective and explosion but with a smaller
Speaker 1: amount of material as we could from several decades ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the weapons these days are far more reliable than than
Speaker 1: those early ones. UM. And we've gone from dropping them
Speaker 1: from planes to mounting them on cruise missiles and I
Speaker 1: see b MS intercontinental ballistic missiles UM. And of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you know these these weapons now travel under their own
Speaker 1: power at a certain point anyway, and um, you know
Speaker 1: the the I C B ms can they actually leave
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and re enter the atmosphere so they can
Speaker 1: travel very very long distances that way. Um, and we
Speaker 1: we wouldn't really be able to to accomplish that if
Speaker 1: we hadn't moved to a fusion method where we could
Speaker 1: be so efficient with the way that we eliminate the
Speaker 1: existence of other people on the planet. I hate to
Speaker 1: put it that way, but you know, ultimately, even though
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that's really scientific, the application of
Speaker 1: this is absolutely horrifying. But it's not even to get
Speaker 1: away from that, but the uh yeah, because if if
Speaker 1: we hadn't done that, if we hadn't come up with
Speaker 1: the fusion process, then it would be much less efficient,
Speaker 1: and we might not have the option of putting something
Speaker 1: on a missile because it would the pay it could
Speaker 1: be too great for for a missile to be uh practical,
Speaker 1: because at that point you would have to build a
Speaker 1: missile that would be able to carry enough fuel so
Speaker 1: that it could propel both the missile itself and the
Speaker 1: payload to wherever it is you're going to send it.
Speaker 1: And it could just become a matter of scale and
Speaker 1: and it just would not be It would be possible
Speaker 1: but not practical. By making it way more efficient, we
Speaker 1: can now put it on top of lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: including you know, not just missiles, but weapons aboard submarines.
Speaker 1: I mean that's all sorts of stuff, right, so terrifying
Speaker 1: in a way, but yeah, we we have we have
Speaker 1: Einstein a thing for it. So next time you see
Speaker 1: that guy, well, UM, one of the things that I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention too. And we don't have to get
Speaker 1: into it in great depth because we're getting there as
Speaker 1: far as time goes. But um is the testing of
Speaker 1: these these weapons traditionally UM. Of course, as Jonathan mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: in the very very early days before they had been
Speaker 1: actually used, UH, scientists wanted to test them to to
Speaker 1: find out if it was even possible to make uh
Speaker 1: the weapon of mass destruction that they envisioned, to to
Speaker 1: to see exactly what would do, how well it would work. UM.
Speaker 1: So they did all this testing outside, um and above ground.
Speaker 1: Now they've a lot of in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: they've done well, they've done tests pretty much in all
Speaker 1: sorts of forms. I mean they still do them outside,
Speaker 1: but uh, in a lot of cases now they uh
Speaker 1: weapons engineers do this underground um in an attempt to
Speaker 1: contain the reaction. Of course, although it UH, a nuclear
Speaker 1: reaction can produce such force that it can vaporize large
Speaker 1: amounts of rock, so they have to be very careful
Speaker 1: where they do this. UM. You know, for a long time,
Speaker 1: many governments around the world would use UH islands to
Speaker 1: to test their their weapons, places that they felt were
Speaker 1: uh somewhat unoccupied. UM. And for for example, UH actually
Speaker 1: that inspired uh the Godzilla series of movies, UM, where
Speaker 1: they a lizard was irradiated on an island. Where it's
Speaker 1: a series of documentary documentaries where uh, the the the
Speaker 1: the one, the one lizard who was irradiated by this
Speaker 1: this nuclear explosion turns into Godzilla and not you know,
Speaker 1: all of the other animals that happened to be living there.
Speaker 1: Um he got just the right amount of deust apparently.
Speaker 1: So UM. They've tested weapons underwater, um, you know, and
Speaker 1: in space, but people are are gradually moving to computer testing, UM,
Speaker 1: which allows scientists to get a much better idea of
Speaker 1: how things might work without having to actually blow something up,
Speaker 1: actually blow something up uh and create the environmental conditions UM,
Speaker 1: the the fallout and and reactions that would follow UM.
Speaker 1: And they've found that this can be actually beneficial. I
Speaker 1: was reading an article I believe it was in the
Speaker 1: Washington Post that was saying that uh uh computer modeling
Speaker 1: had allowed engineers to discover problems that they hadn't realized
Speaker 1: existed with the weapons system that they built UM and
Speaker 1: uh prevented it from becoming you know, they re engineered
Speaker 1: the weapons that were in existence because there was a
Speaker 1: possibility that it may not then it may cause problems
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be a stable UM and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. But of course they've found out through
Speaker 1: testing that that fallout can travel UM through air currents
Speaker 1: and water. And uh, I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that leads to UM fear that keeps people from
Speaker 1: using nuclear weapons more freely, because people really understand now
Speaker 1: more than they did UM years ago, that you know,
Speaker 1: this is not something that should be done casually. You know.
Speaker 1: There's also the fear of the hypothetical nuclear winter, yes,
Speaker 1: which you know, the particulate matter from multiple explosions basically
Speaker 1: causing clouds above the earth right which would block the
Speaker 1: sun's light from reaching the ground, thus killing off a
Speaker 1: lot of the plant life that depends upon sunlight and
Speaker 1: then that it ends up that ends up killing off
Speaker 1: the species that all depend on plants, humans being one
Speaker 1: of them. So it could end up being a global
Speaker 1: extinction event. It could also be something where it just
Speaker 1: changes the climate globally where you know, we actually do
Speaker 1: have a really harsh winter because the sun's light just
Speaker 1: isn't hitting the surface and warming it the way it
Speaker 1: usually would. Uh. And we see, we see things that
Speaker 1: could point us into like suggest that that's true by
Speaker 1: by things like like a volcanic eruptions where a lot
Speaker 1: of matters is ejected into the atmosphere and it can
Speaker 1: affect uh, local weather patterns. Now, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: a nuclear winner, we're talking about something that would last
Speaker 1: longer than a you know, just a month or two.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty it's a it's a it's a one
Speaker 1: of those doomsday scenarios. It's a sobering thought, to be sure.
Speaker 1: Um And uh, you know, it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I'm interested in this is, you know, to see the
Speaker 1: flip side, you know, the idea that that nuclear energy
Speaker 1: can be used as a very efficient and clean source
Speaker 1: of power. Of course, we saw we we talked about
Speaker 1: the Fukushima UM reactor last year, right after it happened. UM,
Speaker 1: but that's not the same as an intentionally intentionally using
Speaker 1: nuclear power to cause the destruction of many people. So UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing to me personally that a little tiny
Speaker 1: atom can be used to do these amazing things, whether
Speaker 1: they're you know, and I mean amazing and the clinical
Speaker 1: good thing, instructive or destructive. It's it's amazing. It is amazing,
Speaker 1: And well, probably I think what we'll need to do
Speaker 1: is in a future podcast, we'll have to do a
Speaker 1: full episode just on the Manhattan Project, because the if
Speaker 1: you look at a list of names of the people
Speaker 1: associated with it, if you've ever taken any any classes
Speaker 1: in physics, you're going to recognize a lot of those names.
Speaker 1: I mean, the era that the Manhattan Project existed in
Speaker 1: was remarkable in the sense of it was it was
Speaker 1: an unprecedented era of scientific exploration and innovation. UM. One
Speaker 1: of those where you just it was phenomenal the amount
Speaker 1: of of uh work and scientific discovery that went on
Speaker 1: at that time, and in no small part that was
Speaker 1: due to things like World War World. World War two
Speaker 1: was definitely one of the reasons why that those those
Speaker 1: advances were made at the pace they were. It's not
Speaker 1: the only reason. It was one of those things where
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff doing together all at once and
Speaker 1: kind of created this environment. Anyway. Hence for another podcast,
Speaker 1: because this one's gone on long enough. If you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics that Chris and I should
Speaker 1: talk about in the future, I welcome you to email us.
Speaker 1: Our address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: let us know on Facebook and Twitter. You can find
Speaker 1: us there with the handle text stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
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